1 June 2011

After the excitement of the trip to San Francisco during week 20, week 21 was a major letdown, both because I had to go back to work Monday morning after arriving home Sunday evening, and photographically speaking as well. But no week without pictures, so…

Main
I had bought some new grips for my mountain bike in a bicycle shop in San Francisco. I installed them a few days after my return, and was struck by the super-ecological packaging. Recycled paper is common, but soy ink? You can practically eat this cardboard:

Alternates:

Alternate 1
We have some trees in the neighbourhood with incredibly pretty blueish flowers. This week I tried to get a decent picture of them while walking my dog:

Alternate 2
The blue flowers all end up like this:

The remaining three pictures are an illustration of the real estate crisis in this part of Spain. In Alicante alone there are thousands of empty or unfinished apartment buildings. The banks with the exposure are the local savings banks, the cajas, which, as opposed to the big Spanish banks like Santander, are hurting badly right now.

Alternate 3
This apartment building is largely complete, but note that the “for sale” sign near the top carries the logo of CAM, one of the cajas which now finds itself as the unhappy owner of the project. The graffiti at the base is a play on the name of Spain’s prime minister Zapatero; “paro” means “unemployment” in Spanish:

Alternate 4
Next door is a building abandoned in mid-construction:

Alternate 5
The broken billboard once advertised the apartments being built here. This is not a bad area; while it is not exactly waterfront, the walk to the beach is quite short. But there is not much life in the immediate surroundings which is probably what doomed this project: